Friday, September 16, 2005
Me and my iBook high in the sky
Friday, 1:03 pm
I know, it's been too long since I've posted anything. But on the other hand, this entry is being written from an airplane, so I suppose that detail will just have to serve as my penance in terms of making up time. If you haven't already put two and two together, I'll spell it out by sharing that I decided to take my new iBook on my weekend getaway trip. At the risk of dipping into the mundane, I'll also share that it's been more than three years since I left set foot on an airplane, and although it's not the first time I've taken a laptop on a plane, it is the first time I've flown with an iPod, which just astounds me. I've been on precisely one flight since I bought my first iPod in late 2001, and for reasons that I can't fathom or seem to recall, I elected not to take it with me. Perhaps it's because the First Generation iPod was about eight times as large as the iPod nano currently strapped to my arm. Yeah, that's right, you've caught me wearing my nano in an armband while on an airplane, which remarkably has less to do with the fact that there are so few (read: no) nano cases on the market, and more to do with the fact that with its incredible lack of depth or overall bulk, the nano acts almost as an extension of your upper arm. In fact, I can't wait until the tidal wave of third party nano armbands comes rushing in next month so I can find an even more natural-feeling one than the one I'm currently using. Maybe it'll even motivate me to exercise or something.
But that's another story for another site, I suppose. What I'm interested in currently is the art of not only flying with my laptop, but making it a useful tool during travel. Sure, it's nothing new, as a tenth of the people on this flight are seemingly pecking away at their portable. But for me, it's a new experience almost entirely. I flew once with my original clamshell iBook, and that turned out to be something of a non-starter for me, both because the thing was too big to be used comfortably and because I didn't have a real reason for using it on the plane other than to pass the time. I never flew with my fifteen inch PowerBook, for the obvious reason that I never flew anywhere during the time I owned it. But here we go off to Ohio for the weekend, or here I go anyway, as the other people I'm with are meeting me in Cleveland, via other flights from other places. It's going to seem strange, I think, for a Florida resident to meet up in Cleveland for the weekend with other Florida residents, but...oh, I had a point here, what was it? Oh right, the joys of flying with a tiny little twelve inch laptop.
You see, while I believe my fifteen incher could have fit on my little fold-out tray, I certainly wouldn't have had room left over for the little turkey sandwich and soda to sit on the tray next to it. Two hundred bucks, and this is lunch? Oh well. I think the thing that irks me the most is the fact that they stuck us with a bag of m&m's without offering the choice of plain or peanut. I mean, who eats plain m&m's, anyway? Oh right, can't serve peanuts because of people and their peanut allergies, I forgot. Seems kind of silly. But then again, if they've banned smoking on flights because people like me are allergic to it, then I guess they have to ban everything that could potentially set one or more passengers into an allergic frenzy.
Except for dogs, apparently. The young lady next to me has brought her dog with her in a little dog carrier and has it down by her feet. The thing was barking like mad before the flight took off, but as soon as we got in the air and its owner wanted to get some sleep, the dog shut right up. I find it remarkable that dogs seem to be able to sense that kind of thing with their owner, and are willing to accommodate despite the fact that the poor little thing has to be scared to death down there. Either that, or it's still barking and I can't hear it over the roar of the jet engines.
A lot of things have changed since the last time I flew. Checking in simply by swiping the credit card you purchased the ticket with? Great time saver. Having to take your shoes off when you through the metal detector? Lost of the time saved and more. I don't know enough about what goes on on planes these days to comment about whether it's appropriate to have passengers walking around in their socks in the security checkpoint area. I will say that whatever they're looking for, I don't think they're likely to find it. You want evidence? I unintentionally left my iPod's earbuds in my side pants pocket when I went through the metal detector. Metal earbuds, metal jack, metal zipper on the little bag I carry them in. Did any of it set off the metal detectors? Nope. Do what do you think you're going to find in my shoes, again? Kind of reminds me of the newly implemented pat-down they perform on all 73,000 people who attend Miami Dolphins games. They touch both your shoulders, touch your stomach, look under your hat, and send you on your merry way. They have to know that by not even so much as checking people's pants pockets, they have no real chance of preventing anyone from bringing anything they want into the stadium. But I guess it's comforting to know that the guy sitting next to me at games doesn't have any forbidden items strapped to his stomach or sitting on his shoulders. Like a bag of Cheetos or something. I mean, you can't have people dodging the concession stand prices like that.
I still don't know whether there will be internet access in the hotel. It'll be nice if they have it, but because this is just a weekend trip, I didn't make it a priority. I'm not the one who booked the hotel, and while it claims to have in-room internet access, that more often than not simply means that when inquire about it, they tell you to connect your laptop's modem to the phone line in the room and use your existing dial-up account. Is it false advertising on their part? Absolutely. I mean, dial-up? That still even exists? Anyway, I'll find out the story once I get there. If this were a mid-week journey, it would be a deal-breaker. But while it's true that the internet never sleeps. it does tend to sleep a bit more on the weekend.
For now, the one issue I hadn't seen coming is just how little room there is to do any actual typing when you're sitting in an airplane seat. The area isn't wide enough to have your elbows at your side, nor is it deep enough to put your elbows out in front of you. Instead they're pinned to my sides in a manner just uncomfortable enough...no scratch that, I just realized that because my laptop is so small, it actually works better right on my lap than on the tray table. Learn something new every day around here. I guess I'll be doing a lot of that this weekend. I've never been to Cedar Point, never been to Cleveland, only been to Ohio once and that was ten years ago, never rented a car before (believe it or not), and haven't stayed five to a hotel room since high school.
More new stuff about flights I hadn't seen before: video screens not only show clips from CNN, they also display how many miles are left in the flight, along with a graphic that shows the plane over a specific part of the country. I don't know, I think I'd rather not be reminded that I'm 37,000 feet off the ground every three seconds. I have no fear of flying to speak of, but I think that's primarily because I can easily delude myself into believing that I'm actually just sitting on a bus with noisy engines or something. I wonder what the traffic will be like trying to get out of Cleveland during rush hour on a Friday afternoon. I wonder if my flight will actually arrive on time, as it is currently predicted to. I wonder if the other people I'm meeting in the airport will arrive on time. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
Well, if I'm going to throw my back out on this trip, I want it to be because of one too many rollercoasters, not because I spent too much time writing on the plane, so I think I'll knock off for now. I think I'll try to get some actual work done, some that involves a bit less typing. That, and I have to figure out how to adjust my watch to Central Time Zone. Undoubtedly the most confounding part of any east-west flight.
More later during the next patch of downtime.
Friday, 3:32 pm
I don't know what's worse: the embarrassment of learning that Cleveland is in fact in the Eastern Time Zone after all, or the aggravation of having to set my watch back to EST after I had already spent an inordinate amount of time getting the thing set to CST in the first place. If you're wondering, I'm sitting in the rental car pickup place, waiting for the rest of the Gang of Five to straddle in. They're all set to touch down any minute now, so I figured I'd get the rental car thing out of the way. It seems they've run out of the model of car we rented, so they had to upgrade us, poor unfortunate souls that we are, to this monster-size luxury SUV called a (wait, let me look for it again) Chrysler Pacifica. The thing comfortably seats seven. Not seven people. Seven families. The only thing it lacks is a guy who jumps out from under the rear bumper and motions to you while you're backing up. A few minutes to kill, so I finally got my peanut m&m's out of a vending machine. Funny enough, I wouldn't have had any interest in them at all if not for the fact that I was taunted with them on the plane ride.
Not much else to do here at the rental car place other than sit here and eat m&m's and do some writing. The rental place is at least a mile from the airport so it's not like I can go back over there and sit down at a bar or something. Whoops, there's the call. Time to go pick up the gang. And just to drive the visual home, yes, I'm sitting in the lobby of a car rental place typing away on my laptop. Doesn't even feel all that out of place.
Friday. 6:11 pm
Made it to the hotel despite the usual inaccurate directions from Mapquest. Never using Mapquest again. And this time I mean it. Turns out the hotel has free wireless internet after all, but only in the lobby. Still some extent of false advertising, but hey, whatever works. Really not sure why there's a card in the room that claims that the room has wireless access, when the desk says the rooms don't, and reality says the rooms don't. Oh well.
Highly impressed with how the iBook's battery has held up so far. I've used it for more than two hours so far today, and I've still got two-thirds of it left. Also, have I mentioned how much I like its compact size?
Friday, 9:48 pm
Finally made it over to the lobby to hit the internet. I don't think there's ever been a more clear demonstration of why I use a Mac than when we walked over to the lobby together, me with my iBook, my friend with his brand new "top of the line" Dell laptop. I opened the lid of my laptop, a box popped up and asked if I wanted to join the wireless network, I clicked yes, and instantly I was surfing. Ten minutes later, my friend is still trying to get onto the net. And yes, his laptop came with a built-in wireless card too. Third friend who doesn't have a laptop (but uses Windows) still can't believe that I got on the internet that easily. Doesn't believe I'm actually online. No frame of reference of a computer could operate that efficiently and effortlessly.
Alright, that's enough Windows bashing. I'm on vacation.
Friday, 1:03 pm
I know, it's been too long since I've posted anything. But on the other hand, this entry is being written from an airplane, so I suppose that detail will just have to serve as my penance in terms of making up time. If you haven't already put two and two together, I'll spell it out by sharing that I decided to take my new iBook on my weekend getaway trip. At the risk of dipping into the mundane, I'll also share that it's been more than three years since I left set foot on an airplane, and although it's not the first time I've taken a laptop on a plane, it is the first time I've flown with an iPod, which just astounds me. I've been on precisely one flight since I bought my first iPod in late 2001, and for reasons that I can't fathom or seem to recall, I elected not to take it with me. Perhaps it's because the First Generation iPod was about eight times as large as the iPod nano currently strapped to my arm. Yeah, that's right, you've caught me wearing my nano in an armband while on an airplane, which remarkably has less to do with the fact that there are so few (read: no) nano cases on the market, and more to do with the fact that with its incredible lack of depth or overall bulk, the nano acts almost as an extension of your upper arm. In fact, I can't wait until the tidal wave of third party nano armbands comes rushing in next month so I can find an even more natural-feeling one than the one I'm currently using. Maybe it'll even motivate me to exercise or something.
But that's another story for another site, I suppose. What I'm interested in currently is the art of not only flying with my laptop, but making it a useful tool during travel. Sure, it's nothing new, as a tenth of the people on this flight are seemingly pecking away at their portable. But for me, it's a new experience almost entirely. I flew once with my original clamshell iBook, and that turned out to be something of a non-starter for me, both because the thing was too big to be used comfortably and because I didn't have a real reason for using it on the plane other than to pass the time. I never flew with my fifteen inch PowerBook, for the obvious reason that I never flew anywhere during the time I owned it. But here we go off to Ohio for the weekend, or here I go anyway, as the other people I'm with are meeting me in Cleveland, via other flights from other places. It's going to seem strange, I think, for a Florida resident to meet up in Cleveland for the weekend with other Florida residents, but...oh, I had a point here, what was it? Oh right, the joys of flying with a tiny little twelve inch laptop.
You see, while I believe my fifteen incher could have fit on my little fold-out tray, I certainly wouldn't have had room left over for the little turkey sandwich and soda to sit on the tray next to it. Two hundred bucks, and this is lunch? Oh well. I think the thing that irks me the most is the fact that they stuck us with a bag of m&m's without offering the choice of plain or peanut. I mean, who eats plain m&m's, anyway? Oh right, can't serve peanuts because of people and their peanut allergies, I forgot. Seems kind of silly. But then again, if they've banned smoking on flights because people like me are allergic to it, then I guess they have to ban everything that could potentially set one or more passengers into an allergic frenzy.
Except for dogs, apparently. The young lady next to me has brought her dog with her in a little dog carrier and has it down by her feet. The thing was barking like mad before the flight took off, but as soon as we got in the air and its owner wanted to get some sleep, the dog shut right up. I find it remarkable that dogs seem to be able to sense that kind of thing with their owner, and are willing to accommodate despite the fact that the poor little thing has to be scared to death down there. Either that, or it's still barking and I can't hear it over the roar of the jet engines.
A lot of things have changed since the last time I flew. Checking in simply by swiping the credit card you purchased the ticket with? Great time saver. Having to take your shoes off when you through the metal detector? Lost of the time saved and more. I don't know enough about what goes on on planes these days to comment about whether it's appropriate to have passengers walking around in their socks in the security checkpoint area. I will say that whatever they're looking for, I don't think they're likely to find it. You want evidence? I unintentionally left my iPod's earbuds in my side pants pocket when I went through the metal detector. Metal earbuds, metal jack, metal zipper on the little bag I carry them in. Did any of it set off the metal detectors? Nope. Do what do you think you're going to find in my shoes, again? Kind of reminds me of the newly implemented pat-down they perform on all 73,000 people who attend Miami Dolphins games. They touch both your shoulders, touch your stomach, look under your hat, and send you on your merry way. They have to know that by not even so much as checking people's pants pockets, they have no real chance of preventing anyone from bringing anything they want into the stadium. But I guess it's comforting to know that the guy sitting next to me at games doesn't have any forbidden items strapped to his stomach or sitting on his shoulders. Like a bag of Cheetos or something. I mean, you can't have people dodging the concession stand prices like that.
I still don't know whether there will be internet access in the hotel. It'll be nice if they have it, but because this is just a weekend trip, I didn't make it a priority. I'm not the one who booked the hotel, and while it claims to have in-room internet access, that more often than not simply means that when inquire about it, they tell you to connect your laptop's modem to the phone line in the room and use your existing dial-up account. Is it false advertising on their part? Absolutely. I mean, dial-up? That still even exists? Anyway, I'll find out the story once I get there. If this were a mid-week journey, it would be a deal-breaker. But while it's true that the internet never sleeps. it does tend to sleep a bit more on the weekend.
For now, the one issue I hadn't seen coming is just how little room there is to do any actual typing when you're sitting in an airplane seat. The area isn't wide enough to have your elbows at your side, nor is it deep enough to put your elbows out in front of you. Instead they're pinned to my sides in a manner just uncomfortable enough...no scratch that, I just realized that because my laptop is so small, it actually works better right on my lap than on the tray table. Learn something new every day around here. I guess I'll be doing a lot of that this weekend. I've never been to Cedar Point, never been to Cleveland, only been to Ohio once and that was ten years ago, never rented a car before (believe it or not), and haven't stayed five to a hotel room since high school.
More new stuff about flights I hadn't seen before: video screens not only show clips from CNN, they also display how many miles are left in the flight, along with a graphic that shows the plane over a specific part of the country. I don't know, I think I'd rather not be reminded that I'm 37,000 feet off the ground every three seconds. I have no fear of flying to speak of, but I think that's primarily because I can easily delude myself into believing that I'm actually just sitting on a bus with noisy engines or something. I wonder what the traffic will be like trying to get out of Cleveland during rush hour on a Friday afternoon. I wonder if my flight will actually arrive on time, as it is currently predicted to. I wonder if the other people I'm meeting in the airport will arrive on time. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
Well, if I'm going to throw my back out on this trip, I want it to be because of one too many rollercoasters, not because I spent too much time writing on the plane, so I think I'll knock off for now. I think I'll try to get some actual work done, some that involves a bit less typing. That, and I have to figure out how to adjust my watch to Central Time Zone. Undoubtedly the most confounding part of any east-west flight.
More later during the next patch of downtime.
Friday, 3:32 pm
I don't know what's worse: the embarrassment of learning that Cleveland is in fact in the Eastern Time Zone after all, or the aggravation of having to set my watch back to EST after I had already spent an inordinate amount of time getting the thing set to CST in the first place. If you're wondering, I'm sitting in the rental car pickup place, waiting for the rest of the Gang of Five to straddle in. They're all set to touch down any minute now, so I figured I'd get the rental car thing out of the way. It seems they've run out of the model of car we rented, so they had to upgrade us, poor unfortunate souls that we are, to this monster-size luxury SUV called a (wait, let me look for it again) Chrysler Pacifica. The thing comfortably seats seven. Not seven people. Seven families. The only thing it lacks is a guy who jumps out from under the rear bumper and motions to you while you're backing up. A few minutes to kill, so I finally got my peanut m&m's out of a vending machine. Funny enough, I wouldn't have had any interest in them at all if not for the fact that I was taunted with them on the plane ride.
Not much else to do here at the rental car place other than sit here and eat m&m's and do some writing. The rental place is at least a mile from the airport so it's not like I can go back over there and sit down at a bar or something. Whoops, there's the call. Time to go pick up the gang. And just to drive the visual home, yes, I'm sitting in the lobby of a car rental place typing away on my laptop. Doesn't even feel all that out of place.
Friday. 6:11 pm
Made it to the hotel despite the usual inaccurate directions from Mapquest. Never using Mapquest again. And this time I mean it. Turns out the hotel has free wireless internet after all, but only in the lobby. Still some extent of false advertising, but hey, whatever works. Really not sure why there's a card in the room that claims that the room has wireless access, when the desk says the rooms don't, and reality says the rooms don't. Oh well.
Highly impressed with how the iBook's battery has held up so far. I've used it for more than two hours so far today, and I've still got two-thirds of it left. Also, have I mentioned how much I like its compact size?
Friday, 9:48 pm
Finally made it over to the lobby to hit the internet. I don't think there's ever been a more clear demonstration of why I use a Mac than when we walked over to the lobby together, me with my iBook, my friend with his brand new "top of the line" Dell laptop. I opened the lid of my laptop, a box popped up and asked if I wanted to join the wireless network, I clicked yes, and instantly I was surfing. Ten minutes later, my friend is still trying to get onto the net. And yes, his laptop came with a built-in wireless card too. Third friend who doesn't have a laptop (but uses Windows) still can't believe that I got on the internet that easily. Doesn't believe I'm actually online. No frame of reference of a computer could operate that efficiently and effortlessly.
Alright, that's enough Windows bashing. I'm on vacation.
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